By many accounts, Rep. Vito Fossella, a Republican who represents Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, faces a difficult re-election bid in 2006. Next week, however, he’ll get some high-profile GOP backing: Vice President Cheney is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a Fossella fund-raiser on July 25.

The vice president will be the “main attraction” at a Fossella re-election gig to be held Monday evening on Staten Island, a Republican official said. Tickets to the event at the Excelsior Grand, a suburban-style banquet hall evocative of Roman antiquity, will cost $250 each, the official, who asked not to be named, said. He added that organizers expected around 800 attendees, and that the goal of the Cheney fund-raiser was to add $250,000 to Mr. Fossella’s re-election war chest.

Mr. Fossella is the lone GOP member of New York City’s congressional delegation, and despite representing a borough with a long track record of Republican sympathies and voting patterns, the congressman came surprisingly close to losing his seat last year to his Democratic challenger, Frank Barbaro.

Some of Mr. Fossella’s Democratic critics are taking the vice president’s visit as a sign that the Bush administration is concerned about losing House seats in next year’s midterm elections, and that they believe Mr. Fossella’s may be particularly vulnerable.

“They’ve lost a lot of seats in New York State over the last couple of cycles,” the executive director of the New York State Democratic Party, Rodney Capel, said. “I’m sure they’re probably concerned about where they stand in this mid-term election … and they’re worried about it, and Mr. Fossella in his last election showed a lot of vulnerability.”

The vice president’s attendance at a fund-raiser for Mr. Fossella on Staten Island, Mr. Capel added, “clearly … shows how important and how concerned they feel about one of their top lieutenants having a tough cycle and having to raise money for him.”

The executive director of the New York State Republican Committee, Ryan Moses, responded by saying that “the state Republican Party thinks it’s great that the vice president of the United States is coming in and holding a fund-raiser for one of our great congressmen, Vito Fossella,” adding that Mr. Cheney’s show of support for the congressman was likely the result Mr. Fossella’s “strong record in Washington,” representing the people of Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Mr. Fossella’s office declined to comment about the fund-raiser, but the congressman, in an e-mailed statement, said: “While we may differ on some issues, it is important for the people of Staten Island and Brooklyn that I have a strong working relationship with the president and vice president.” Mr. Fossella, while largely seen as loyal to the president, has recently clashed with the Bush administration on issues such as Social Security reform and stem-cell research.